Many computers, such as personal computers (PCs), have an operating system that supports the execution of software applications on the computer's hardware. Occasionally, a user of a computer may lose personal data, active documents, or work product following a failure of an application. Application failures commonly occur due to application errors, and may result in the loss of data and inconvenience to application users. Furthermore, although application failures may occur for many reasons, users often identify the operating system as a cause for the instability of the computer application.
Some applications attempt to compensate for application failures by offering a self-recovery feature that enables a user to revert the application following an application failure. However, not all applications offer such a self-recovery feature. Furthermore, when the self-recovery feature of a particular application behaves incorrectly or erroneously, users may not be able to recover the application following an application failure.